Unique review of MR ARKADIN - from UK 1974

[Tashman]

For whatever reason, I picked up a book long relegated to a box in the closet, THE LONG VIEW -- a subjective overview of film through the turn of the 1970s -- by British documentarian, Basil Wright. Leafing through it reminded me that the pages on Welles' career are rare among books of this type, in that the points of emphasis extend well beyond those we've all seen ad nauseum. Wright's summary takes in, in this order: AMBERSONS, THE STRANGER, KANE, ARKADIN, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, and THE IMMORTAL STORY. All other dramatic works are at least named but THE TRIAL (and I wonder if he simply never saw it); AMBERSONS is seen as exceptional to Wright's guiding reduction that Welles "makes films about monsters," and THE STRANGER is seen as the miscue of the lot.

An introductory sentence does well enough to set Wright apart immediately: "Today, some thirty years [after CITIZEN KANE], we can note that the effervescence of the enfant terrible masked something deeper. The pattern of Orson Welles' thought can be viewed in the perspective of time, and we can see THE IMMORTAL STORY as a threnodic coda to CITIZEN KANE as well as a beautiful diadem to crown all the work that has gone between." Someone who even recognized "all the work"--that rare spectator.

The greater oddity is that in these brief pages, THE IMMORTAL STORY occupies as much space as AMBERSONS, and MR ARKADIN slightly more space than these. Just as he has CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT stand in favorably, as a singular accomplishment, for Welles' Shakespeare work, ARKADIN stands in for the romantic thrillers. Here's his review of the latter, and I've just included it all to indicate the rare enthusiasm for the picture as well as a few interesting details or deceptions of memory in Wright's recap of the plot (such as the ending). We can only assume that he was referring to CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, though he did live in North America for some several years.

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Of the series of strange fantasy thrillers which Welles made from time to time after THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and the abortive South American trip, I myself have a preference for MR ARKADIN, also known as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT (1955). Most people prefer THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947), with its bizarre climax in the hall of mirrors, or the more realistic and claustrophobic violence of TOUCH OF EVIL (1957); but for me MR ARKADIN is the quintessence of this aspect of Welles. It is a film which is not about a single monster, but about a gallery of monsters in a world where all dreams are nightmares. Like other Welles films it is built round the idea of a search; but in this case the search itself wriggles and turns back on its own track like a snake.

Arkadin -- a personage suggested perhaps by Kruger or Zaharoff -- has, like Kane, risen to the position of unprecidented wealth and therefore power by methods which would hardly stand up comfortably to public examination. To prevent his daughter finding out about this grimy and disgusting past, he employs a special agent to seek out all those who were concerned in it, with the intention of ensuring that they are murdered one and all, including necessarily, and as a final bonne bouche, the agent himself. The film follows the agent's search, which becomes more and more macabre, until at its conclusion he realizes the brutal fact of Arkadin's final intention. How he thwarts this is shown in a tense and extraordinary final sequence with Arkadin circling the sky alone in a tiny plane and talking by radio-phone to his daughter who is in the airport control tower. When she tells him that she knows everything he jumps out, and the film, like the plane itself, spirals out of control into a final crash -- 'The End'.

The nub of this film is in the series of visits by the agent, Van Stratten, first to Arkadin himself and then to the various ex-collaborators. Arkadin is played by Welles who also, and rather unfortunately, chose to dub his voice onto some of the other characters -- presumably a money-saving gimmick.

Van Stratten's first interviews with him take place during a fantastic fancy-dress party in one of those Spanish castles the reality of which it is always so difficult to accept -- a touch here from Stroheim's world of THE WEDDING MARCH and QUEEN KELLY. When, briefed by Arkadin, he starts his search, it takes him across the world. In Copenhagen he finds the Professor (Mischa Auer), proprietor of a flea circus, in a scene weirdly dominated by a top hat and a magnifying glass. On then to an antique shop run by Trebitsch -- an eccentric played quite unforgettably by Michael Redgrave. In his cluttered den, filthily dirty, wearing a greasily sinister hairnet and surrounded by equally sinister cats, this monster of monsters, with his whining epicene voice, is eventually persuaded to provide the next clue which, by this stage not unsurprisingly, takes Van Stratten to Mexico.

Here again we meet a monster -- Sophie, Arkadin's ex-mistress who must indeed know a very great deal too much, impeccably presented by Katina Paxinou -- chain-smoking, card-playing, sinister, placid, imperturbable on a sunny terrace by the subtropic sea. At which point, with rupturing effect, Welles flings us across to Munich in mid-winter, where this totentanz reaches its climax in perhaps the most grotesque piece of filming ever thought up by Welles. In Munich there is one more personage to be sought, one Zouk (played by Akim Tamiroff even better than his later 'Uncle' in TOUCH OF EVIL) who, by now poverty-stricken, despairing, is prepared possibly to provide the needed information in return for a meal of pâté de foie gras. By this time Arkadin himself has turned up, and he organizes a massive procession of waiters who rush along the frozen streets from an expensive restaurant bearing with them the coveted goodies; preludes to Zouk's bumping off.

One of the great attractions of MR ARKADIN is that the evil in it is fabulous in the strict sense of the word. The monsters in the film are the monsters of fable; thus the evil is at second remove, and the frissons are from a ghost story. The more genuine evil of a Kindler or a Quinlan is miles away. The film is in a sense a mere jeu d'esprit, but it is carried out with such imagination and with such a perfectly chosen cast that it is a sort of compendium of Wellesian style. It also reminds one, as I have said, of Stroheim (Trebitsch with his cats and Zouk with his pâté come from a GREED or FOOLISH WIVES sub-plot), and of Buñuel (the procession of waiters could be from THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL). The quality of the soundtrack is quite disastrous, but there is a certain grandeur about the carelessness of the film's construction which makes one forget everything except the immediacy of the moment.

[Glenn Anders]

Tashman: What an excellent appreciation on the part of Basil Wright!

Given what we now know, granting the vagaries of memory, it may be that Wright saw a variation of MR. ARKADIN/CONFIDENTIAL REPORT.

For instance, I'm certain that the picture I saw in London in 1955 was entitled CONFIDENTIAL REPORT. [I had read interviews with Welles in London newspapers during late 1954, early 1955, of a new picture which he was variously calling M. ARKADIN, MR. ARKADIN, DOSSIER REPORT, and perhaps a couple of other titles. Looking through the Keith Prowse playbill, I almost missed a film titled CONFIDENTIAL REPORT.] If I am correct that there were several versions about, even then, it might explain a few of Mr. Wright's observations.

Also note that the Munich Film Archive edit does ends with Arkadin's plane crashing to earth. Aside from the lack of Zouk's emergence from prison, the other discrepency of that edit is, to my memory, the ending.

Welles' sense of classic dramaturgy would at least have clashed with the idea of ending the film with an abrupt crash. We have seen smoke rising as Raina's car drives away. (Maddeningly, too, as the car drives up! Perhaps, Welles' usual budget constraints explains it, but why might at least that confusion have been edited out?] I remember Raina being driven away at the end of the film, but I also recall a more extended back and forth earlier between Raina in the tower, Arkadin in his plane, observations by the pilots of the airliner, intercuts with Van Stratten, before the plane begins to tailspin toward the deck, CRASH, then the intercom going dead in the tower.

The symetry would have been that Arkadin might have thought that he had betrayed his innocent daughter, and had returned to the sea where he had left murdered the other essentially innocent character in MR. ARKADIN, the foolishly adventurous Milly. [I read, somewhere, that Welles origninally intended to stage a crash into the sea, but finances precluded it.] In the denouement, then, as I believe Welles would have concluded his final cut, Raina is "rescued" from Van Stratten by the lesser of two evils, the English lord.

[Welles (and John Huston) would have been at the height of their "lordly period" in 1954 and 1955.]

That kind of ending, then and now, is not a conventional one, which may be the reason that Droessler, rather irrationally from my point of view, chose to end his MR. ARKADIN with the plane crashing (into the end titles).

Anyway, thank you, Tashman, for digging out what sounds like a fine series of reviews by Basil Wright.

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

Glenn, I have to disagree with you here inasmuch as I believe the "Comprehensive Version" ending brings the emphasis back to Arkadin where it belongs. Actually, I tend to think Raina and the Marquis driving off is a fairly conventional, if downbeat, ending, but the film is not about those two or Guy Van Stratten. It is about Arkadin, the unknowable one. He himself vanishes into thin air, of course, a little like the fairy tale ogre he daughter imagines him, but by returning to the empty plane running out of gas and crashing in the sea, we are given a nice little metaphor for how Arkadin has allowed his paranoia to spin his life out of his control. Like Kane, Arkadin had everything, then lost it. Why? Guilt, I suppose. Arkadin has already attempted to erase his past before he meets Van Stratten, but his life begins to unravel at a furious pace once that interloper enters the picture and Arkadin tries to retain control of his younger self, both his actual "younger self" and Van Stratten, who in a way represents his younger self. The plane spiralling to the sea at the film's end is Arkadin's life now completely out of his control which is a metaphor missing from the other versions. I see it like the "No Trespassing" sign in "Kane"; it's there to remind you at the end that the real theme of that film is not the answer to "Rosebud", but the fact that Kane is ultimately unknowable.

By the way, if you look closely you'll see that the smoke seen rising beyond the airport in "Arkadin" comes from a smokestack; it was never meant to represent the crashed plane, although it's logical to misinterpret that since the long shot of the car driving away was the traditional end shot of the movie.

[Glenn Anders]

I think we do disagree, Roger.

The "crash ending" is too old fashioned, in movie terms, and too crude. It is rather like the outlaw shooting his pistol directly into the camera at the end of "The Great Train Robbery."

The "No Trespassing Sign" at the end of . . . KANE, on the other hand, is subtle, reflective, and part of a long denouement. Every Welles' film except, perhaps, THE STRANGER, has such a denouement. Welles would have rejected the idea of an abrupt ending to MR. ARKADIN as a bad one, I'm sure.

You are quite right, Roger, that the smoke comes from a smoke stack. Welles was no doubt attempting to save money by taking advantage of the setting. But in terms of movie logic, and the fact that so many Welles' films end with a smoke cloud, once the drive-away scene is used, the viewer has an emotional investment in the notion that the smoke represents Arkadin's end.

My view is that Arkadin is the subject of MR. ARKADIN, but that the picture is really, on balance, more about Van Stratten. He is the modern Dimitros-like hustler that Arkadin used to be, began what he began as. Arkadin sees the damage he has done in the past, but he cannot evade his nature. He must ruthlessly take advantage, must protect his interests, no matter who he hurts or murders.

In that regard, he is like the Joe Stalins or the oil oligarths of the World.

That is why the picture is so much about Van Stratten. He stands midway between Arkadin and the innocents like Zouk and Milly.

I might say something, Roger, about what does it matter what you say about a man, but I shall not.

There is little way of deciding, in trying to determine Welles' intentions, which view of the picture is a correct one.

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

Well put, Glenn. Of course, any reconstruction attempt is going to show the influence or prejudices of the reconstructionist; that's unavoidable in most cases. Personally, I probably would have left the "crash into the ocean" sound effect off, just show the plane POV as it spirals towards earth, engines cutting out and then that dramatic cut to black with "The End" appearing in silence. If one doesn't like to think of this final shot in the "Comprehensive Version" as a metaphor for Arkadin himself, perhaps it's a fitting one for the life of Van Stratten, or for any of the characters in a film that has such a frenetic, out-of-control trajectory.

Does it deviate from what Welles would have done? Probably, but as the box set reminds us, there is no definitive Welles' version of "Arkadin". Included is one that's close ("Corinth") and one that is less and less satisfactory the more I see it ("Confidential Report"), so why not have one that approaches the footage anew, not to make it more commercial or dumbed down, but to revel in the possibilites that Welles himself set forth when conceiving the project? Choose your favorite; it's fun.

[Glenn Anders]

I agree, Roger, especially with someone I know has the skill and eye to make such things happen.

Glenn

[catbuglah]

The pattern of Orson Welles' thought can be viewed in the perspective of time, and we can see THE IMMORTAL STORY as a threnodic coda to CITIZEN KANE as well as a beautiful diadem to crown all the work that has gone between.

Interesting stuff. If you have a few odd moments to spare, Tashman, I'd be cool if you could throw a few more tidbits from Immortal Story at us. If not, that's OK.

[Tony]

I agree, Cat, and not only was I very impressed with the writing, but that phrase "...we can see THE IMMORTAL STORY as a threnodic coda to CITIZEN KANE as well as a beautiful diadem to crown all the work that has gone between." inspred me to look up the meaning of "threnodic" (threnody is a song for the dead) and "diadem" (which is a crown). A beautiful and unpretentious use of language which looks easy to use but is so hard to do.

Thanks, Tash!

Oh, and I'd like to second Cat's request for a few more Immortal Story tidbits, if possible

[Tashman]

Cat and Tony: this has been abbreviated but should be readable--

Talking about the making of CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, Welles said, "I believe in the film as a poetic medium . . . There is no picture which justifies itself, no matter how beautiful, striking, horrific, tender . . . it doesn't mean anything unless it makes poetry possible. And that suggests something, because poetry should make your hair stand up on your skin, should suggest things, evoke more than you see. The danger in the cinema is that you see everything, because it's a camera. So what you have to do is manage to evoke, to incant, to raise up things which are not really there." [Sight and Sound, Autumn '66]

Evocation is the key to Welles' last film to date... Having mastered a monster [i.e. Falstaff] by falling in love with him, Welles, after CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, could divine in [Dinesen's] exquisite novella -- just as Visconti did in Thomas Mann's Tod in Venedig -- a perfect opportunity to convert the economies of the visual image to the enframed distillation of an elegy. In all elegies, resurrection or no, there must be tragedy; and all elegies must be beautifully framed, for they represent completion.

Certainly, with THE IMMORTAL STORY, Welles has come full circle from CITIZEN KANE. CITIZEN KANE is an obituary; THE IMMORTAL STORY an elegy. Kane dies never having known love; Clay dies on the verge of its discovery. Kane in the end could never reconcile himself to life as he led it, even to life as he could have led it. Everything stopped, frozen, at 'Rosebud'. But Clay in THE IMMORTAL STORY, for all that he has spent his life omitting the things which are of real importance, for all his dry bemusement with finance, comes in the end to reckon with other possibilities. In his dusty loneliness he remembers a legend and, in a last exercise of power, tries to make it come true...

THE IMMORTAL STORY is made with an economy rare in Welles' work. Simple sets, simple images create the ambience. The huge spaciousness of Xanadu is here reduced, distilled into the tropic roominess of punkahed verandahs and balconies, living-areas enlarged by mirrors and by trails of curtains in endless vistas of blowing gauze, amid all of which sits Clay, daily desiccating, like a spider.

Why then is this film so infinitely touching? Mainly, I think, because Clay, in exercizing the power by which he knows that he can bring about the arrangement he desires, knowing too that he can control, even observe, the events he is causing to happen, learns in the process that there is one secret into which he can never, never enter -- the feelings and emotions of the persons involved. Worse still, the situation which his power has so easily created turns out to be one in which all the participants are in doubt...

Clay stands and watches in the shadows outside the bridal chamber; and next morning he sits on his verandah and quietly dies, his 'Rosebud' symbol a conch shell. Nothing else is much changed. One person is dead. The rest, for all that has happened, will remain stranded.

Shot by Willy Kurant in pale tints, with an occasional splash of vividness for contrast; accompanied by Welles' own narration of the Dinesen words and by snatches of Satie's music, as economic in use [here] as they were in composition; and exquisitely performed by [the actors] -- this film, with its beautifully conceived background of dust and sunshine, of hands dealing Tarot cards (the Drowned Sailor comes up of course), and of the discreet movements of black-clad Chinese servants and children, is a contribution to that rare and select list of films which can be truly described as film poetry.

[Glenn Anders]

And just for the record, Tashman, these are further excerpts from Basil Wright's book?

I assume so, and would only comment that, here he gives further examples of rare, valid insights into the paramount place of age, loss, and death in Welles' work.

Glenn

[Tashman]

these are further excerpts from Basil Wright's book?

That's right. All requests answered. Especially when they involve scrivening.

[catbuglah]

Nice -that Basil writes interesting stuff - Thanks for the scrivening, Tashman.

[jaime marzol]

when i saw the new dvd of IMMORTAL STORY i posted here that it was not right. that i have a vhs that looks wild, and dramatic, and the dvd looks normal and boring. some of the experts here scoffed at that, and implied that i didn't know what i was talking about. now i see this review here posted by tashman, "Shot by Willy Kurant in pale tints, with an occasional splash of vividness for contrast."

this is what i have.

if you can find the vhs version of IMMORTAL STORY you will never again watch the dvd.

[Jeff Wilson]

You're right, this one critic must be the final word on the matter. Anyway, here's a comment from Willy Kurant himself in an interview from Cinematheque magazine: "So I told him [Welles] that if he wanted this film to appear on TV the way he had conceived it, it would be best to work with Colortran, a quick booster lighting system that brings out very rich colors (emphasis mine). Welles was thrilled. He hired me on the spot to do both the film's lighting and the framing..." Make of it what you will.

[jaime marzol]

why do the things i find irk you so much, wilson? like the gay character thing in the short draft of kane that i posted about. that irked you. now this irks you. instead of saying, "that's interesting, maybe we have discovered something. want to trade me something for it so i can see it for myself?" isn't that kind of what your job is as webmaster?

first look, and then crit?